Webinar on the ‘Law to Bring Justice’ Interaction with Lawyers and Student Activists
Webinar on the ‘Law to Bring Justice’ Interaction with Lawyers and Student Activists
“The Socio-Legal Information Centre (SLIC) is a collective of Indian lawyers and social activists who provide legal support to the vulnerable and disadvantaged sections of society in India”.
About Preventive detention laws In J&K. The Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 came to be enacted by the erstwhile state Legislature in the year 1978 and by virtue of this enactment “The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Ordinance, 1977” was repealed. The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 is a preventive detention law that was introduced by then Chief Minister of erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1978 to curtail the timber smuggling in the erstwhile state.
The Public safety Act (PSA) allows the detaining authority to detain any person without any trail whatsoever or court order. The detainee can be lodged in any prison or subsidiary jail such as a house in India without a warrant, trial or court hearing for a maximum of two years or one year as the case may be. This piece of legislation has been amended in 1987 and 1990 respectively. By virtue of an amendment inserted in August 2018, the detaining authority can now detain any person and send him to any jail outside the Jammu & Kashmir. Various human rights organizations have criticized this legislation for allowing arbitrary detentions and immunity from prosecution.
Post 4th August 2019, thousands of the persons have been detained in various jails and hundreds are languishing in the jails which are located outside Jammu and Kashmir. We filed several writ petitions wherein we challenged the detention orders passed by the government. There were nearly 500 petitions filed before the High Court but unfortunately all most of the petitions were not decided by the court as a result of which all such petitions became infructuous.